Usually, her mother could afford new sneakers when her old ones got too ratty, but this year, Ivana had to make due. A hole in one of the soles meant her foot was soaking wet whenever it rained. The air stung her skin where the sleeves of her coat were too short to cover her wrists. Fighting the cold in her lungs, Ivana would sing the words to California Girls by Katy Perry, urging Michal to hurry so they didn’t miss the bus. She couldn’t be late. If Amira called her mother again, she’d be whipped worse than last time. The children at school had made fun of her for the way she’d sat after that day. No, she couldn’t be late. But a whipping wasn’t the only reason she longed to get to work on time. She secretly hoped the man who had asked her about going to America would be there again.
On the weekends when there wasn’t extra sewing to do, Ivana would escape their drafty two-room apartment and go in search of American things in the shops in town. Michal was easily bribed with a treat to be quiet while she peered in the windows from the street and hunted for televisions playing American shows. She had been shut out of the shops and bars by storekeepers who knew she was too poor to afford anything inside. One day she would come back from America and turn her nose up at them.
In her memory, she saw the bus pulling to the curb up ahead. People swarmed on and off, wrapped in heavy coats and scarves against the harsh cold. Ivana turned back for Michal. He wasn’t too far behind. She jumped on board and held her hand out for her brother.
He reached her as the bus started to move from the curb.
“Wait! My foot is caught,” Ivana yelled so the driver would slow for Michal.
The driver grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up the bus steps. “Your foot gets caught again on my bus and I’m going to break it off,” he warned.
Several of the old ladies on the bus laughed.
Ivana had pulled Michal to the back of the bus. Mostly older people took the seats and though there were a few empty seats, Ivana made no move to sit down. The last time she’d tried to sit in an empty seat, an old man with sour breath and nose hairs so long they ran into his mustache pulled her out of it by her ear.
She would watch the gray stone buildings pass, the dark sky casting shadows that always made it feel much later than it was. Michal would be stifling a yawn. Ivana would straighten his jacket, then fasten the top button.
“Stop, I’m choking,” he always complained.
“Fine, but you’d better be good. I don’t want you ruining my chances to go to America,” she had told him.
“You can’t go to America. You have to stay with Mama and me.”
Now, sitting on the truck, she prayed he was okay without her. She pictured how angry her mother must have been about her leaving.
She’d left a short note under the teapot where her mother would see it before Michal. She’d packed up only enough to fit in a small duffle and left.
The truck rolled over a large bump and her eyes jolted open. A girl cried. Shivering, Ivana wrapped her scarf up over her head and tied it tightly around her face. She had expected America to be warmer.
To distract herself, she imagined herself in a fancy gown, serving drinks to the people she had seen on the television. The gown was the lightest of pinks, like the blush of the roses once delivered from the small floral store near Amira’s bar. And silk. A perfect fit over her hips and into a full skirt that swayed heavily as she walked and danced. Huddled on the floor of the cold truck, Ivana prayed she would soon arrive at her new life.
Chapter 9
Saturday night after Rosa came home from a night out with friends from the salon, Cameron told her she was going to help with a reconnaissance job. It was partially true. She was doing recon, just not for work. Diego was alive. She wanted to find him. Beyond that, she needed to. She needed to understand. She had believed in him—in them—and she couldn’t let it go. Not until she knew why. Maybe then it would hurt a little less.
Perhaps it was so much harder to digest the deceit because Diego had been her first love. And maybe it was worse because it had taken her until she was nearly thirty to find it. Rosa had been in and out of love a hundred times by thirty, but Cameron was so bent on finding the perfect man that she’d focused on the things that would be the same on the surface—Caucasian, maybe adopted, some Latin connection.
Mama pushed her to be more open to differences, but it had never made sense to her until Diego. Diego’s father had come to America with his twin brother, bringing only the boys—Diego, who was twelve at the time, and two male cousins. The women had stayed in Mexico—Diego’s mother, his aunt and his sister, Claudia. Diego’s father had died within two years of arriving, and Diego was left with two cousins he couldn’t stand and an uncle he didn’t respect. He had been desperate to get back to Mexico, but his uncle forbade it. He was eighteen before he returned. By then, his mother was dead and his sister married to a criminal.
It was a little past three a.m. on a Saturday, but one was never alone for long in San Francisco. Tucking her weapon into the pocket of her down jacket, she cracked the car door open and eased out. She pushed it closed until it clicked and made her way across the street and up the block toward the old appliance store. Duct tape crisscrossed the storefront of a Mexican take-out place, a last effort to hold the broken pane together. Next door, plywood filled in for broken windows. Bright red and blue graffiti decorated the wood, spilling over onto the chipped stucco storefront. It was all exactly how she remembered.
It appeared abandoned now, just as it had the last time she was there. They had come a few days before Diego went undercover. They were at a nightclub called Bruno’s, also in the Mission. He had been called to do a drop-off, so he brought her by, swearing her to secrecy. That time, Diego said there were six undercover cops inside. She never went in. He never spoke of it again, but when she made a list of everywhere he had ever taken her, this was on it.
How many other places had she never seen? What seedy places had the undercover work taken him? What lies had he had to devise to keep himself safe? But the hardest question came again and again. Why hadn’t he trusted her? At least while she was searching for him, there was temporary relief from the onslaught of unanswered questions rolling around in her head on repeat.
She was careful not to mention his name at the station, but she was doing everything to find him. Even if it meant coming to this shit hole in the middle of the night. She tucked her hand into her pocket and gripped her SIG Sauer, thumbing the magazine to be sure it was in place. Her badge was zipped into her breast pocket. She gripped a heavy-duty flashlight in her left hand. A single car key was tucked into her left shoe. Nothing with her home address or contact information—not on her person or in the car. Standard procedure for an undercover cop. But, she was breaking a lot of undercover rules, too. She had her badge and her police-issued SIG.
She wasn’t an undercover cop. She was just trying to think like one. By putting herself in his mindset, maybe she could find him. The storefront was empty. That night, Diego had gone around back. After that, she had no idea what he’d done. She’d have to wing it. With one more look around, she moved swiftly down the alley, shoes popping softly on broken glass. Though she moved as quietly as possible, she was keenly aware of her footsteps echoing across the empty alley.
Halfway down the alley was a metal door, painted black. The alley was quiet, an old, green dumpster her only companion. Here, the walls were free of the graffiti that painted the street. Some places were too daunting even for street artists. Only the faint stench of vomit rising from the ground suggested someone else had been back there recently. Instinctively, she touched the door and tried the knob. It was common in reconnaissance. You could often get a feel for the door’s weight. This one was locked and heavy, nothing she could take down, certainly not without a ram, unless she was prepared to pump it full of bullets. There didn’t appear to be another side entrance. She stared into the dark. The light at the back of the building was out. She flipped on the flashlight and shone it i
nto the blackness. Active. Aware. Adrenaline pumping. She was never on the ground alone. She wished she were sitting on a rooftop with her sniper rifle.
She moved slowly down the alley, watching with a soft focus to allow her peripheral vision to catch any movement. At the back of the building, she used the beam to scan the area. No sign of life. She took one last look at the street and walked along the back of the building. She buttonholed into the first doorway, giving herself a second to gather herself before moving on. She pressed against the side of another dumpster, this one halfway down the alley, a strange place for one since access back here was limited. She sensed a shadow behind her and tightened her grip on the gun in her pocket when a heavy hand grabbed her jacket, forcing her to let go of the SIG. She dropped the light, which rolled to a stop, pointing to the back of the building. Dragged backward, she fought for footing. Her attacker grabbed her under the arms. She threw her elbows one after the other. She missed and missed, then finally one elbow connected. The hit was followed by a drunken curse.
He let go momentarily. She ducked under his arms, scrambling for her weapon. She gripped the metal when a second set of hands grabbed her. One arm was tight across her neck, the other behind it. A rear, naked choke hold. She stopped moving and tucked her chin down to prevent him from getting access to her neck.
The first one stood. His head was shaved, but his beard stretched black fuzz from under his eyes to the place where his T-shirt collar began. His eyes were dark in color and hooded. “What the hell you doing out here?”
She didn’t answer, going limp in her attacker’s arms. Instead of pitching forward, he dropped her. She barely landed on her feet. When she raised her chin, he cracked her in the face. The blackness became blacker, then streaks of light swam across her vision. She touched her cheek. Blood. The eye was swelling. The second man was black, easily six-two and two-twenty.
She wiped the sleeve of her jacket gently across her eye as the beard groped into her pocket. She shoved her elbow toward him but missed. She stumbled back and reached for her pocket. Too slow. He pulled the gun out, letting it hang on one finger from the trigger guard. “What have we got here?”
“Ooh, wee. Um,” the hitter said. He swayed slightly as though under the influence, but his eyes were sharp and clear. The pupils weren’t dilated. Something felt wrong.
“I asked you what you doing way out here… pretty girl like you,” the beard repeated, giving her a smirk that was highlighted by a brilliant gold tooth.
“I’m looking for someone.”
He shrugged and waved his arms out to his sides. “We the only ones here, so maybe you looking for us.”
The black guy nodded. “You looking for us?”
One or both might be undercover cops—maybe it was the swaying with the sharp stare or maybe it was the odd match they made for street thugs—a black man big enough to be a linebacker for the Raiders and a white guy with a shaved head and a gold tooth. One screamed street gang, the other White Supremacist. “I’m looking for Diego Ramirez,” she said. The vision in her left eye was nearly gone.
“You the police?”
Just then, the beard moved his hand to her other pocket and pulled out her badge. He read it before announcing, “Yes, sir, she the police. Special Ops, it says.”
The other man whistled. “That’s pretty fancy for a lady.”
“Do you know where I can find Diego Ramirez?”
The man watched her, unblinking, some kind of test she didn’t pass. “No, ma’am.”
Cameron waited for his next move. When no one made one, she reached for the gun.
The beard snapped it back. “I don’t think so. We done with her, T.J.?”
T.J. shook his head and smiled gold again. “Oh, no. Girl this pretty? A shame to put those looks to waste.” Not cops.
Feigning fear, Cameron folded in, drawing her right leg up into her stomach. With a deep hard breath, she launched the foot sideways, landing it fast and hard in the beard’s stomach. He doubled over, then fell backward, landing on his back. Her gun clattered to the ground. She went for it, but the black man lunged forward. She took two long strides backward and grabbed her backup weapon, a little .22, from her waistband. She gripped it in two hands and tucked it up to the beard’s head. “Drop it and back off,” she yelled. She could take the black man if he didn’t obey, but it would be neater if she didn’t kill anyone while she was out there.
The black man hesitated, one hand on her gun.
“Do it, man,” the beard said.
T.J. dropped her gun and raised both hands over his head. “Okay. Take it easy, lady.”
“Down on your bellies. Both of you.”
The beard groaned and rolled onto his belly.
T.J. got down on all fours.
“Down,” she said, aiming the gun at his face. When both men were down, she kept the gun aimed and retrieved her SIG. She found her badge a few feet away. The flashlight had rolled down the hill. As she picked it up, T.J. lifted his head. “Don’t tempt me to shoot you, asshole,” she warned him.
His head dropped again.
She wanted to bring them in, but that would mean explaining why she was out here. “Count to fifty slowly before so much as blinking. If I see your face before I’m gone, I’ll shoot it off.”
“Sure,” the beard said.
“We hear you,” T.J. added.
With that, Cameron backed out of the alley, her heart pounding in her throat. Safe in the car, she locked the doors, revved the engine and pulled away from the curb. Only when she was stopped at a light a few blocks away did she pull down the mirror and examine her eye. Shit. How was she going to explain that?
As she drove on, the emotion leached out like poison. Where the hell was her reserve, her strength? He’d stolen it—that bastard had come back and ripped it from her. The windows down, wind whipped across her face. Maybe it was time to move on. A different job. Join the sharpshooter team permanently if Special Ops was too hard.
But, she would not allow herself to think about Diego Ramirez. She would push him from her mind. Maybe Diego Ramirez wasn’t dead, but Nate’s father and the man she had known was. Now, it was simply a matter of burying him.
Chapter 10
The soreness in Cameron’s muscles stretched from her shoulders all the way to her ankles. As much as she hated to admit it, she hurt. She had forgotten how much training she had done on the job and how much she’d let herself go. Eleven months she’d been gone, longer since her body had been pushed to its limits.
During her leave, she’d practiced yoga and had run every day, sometimes more than once a day, but it wasn’t the same. Having these men around her, having to compete with them, made her push herself. The men never said a word about how much Cameron could lift, for how long or how fast, but working out beside them was incentive to be better, stronger. She would never settle for being the weakest or slowest. Now, she was both.
In drills, her feet didn’t cooperate; her breath was gone in ten or fifteen minutes. Worse, Ballestrini was competitive. He insisted they work out together, compare times and weights. Though no one expected her to lift more than he did, each comparison reminded her of how she used to be: faster, stronger, more in control, less alone. It brought on emotion she wasn’t accustomed to. Maybe Ballestrini was right; maybe it was postpartum depression.
She knew that it was Diego. She wished she could trade it in for depression—anything but the feeling of being betrayed by him. They were partners, weren’t they? Partners in work and in life. Could she have been so wrong? But, what kind of a relationship did they have if he would keep this kind of secret from her, knowing how devastating it would be? Worse, what if he had gone bad? It happened in undercover work. What if her Diego was now a dirty cop?
She was taking her share of razzing from the guys. A black eye wasn’t something anyone was going to ignore. The barrage of questions felt endless. No one wanted to buy the story about walking into a door in the dark while trying t
o get to the crying baby. She didn’t blame them. Even she had to admit it was pretty lame. Worse was Rosa, who watched Cameron out of the corner of her eye as though trying to solve the mystery with the force of her stare. It was starting to work. At least she had vision in both eyes again.
Beside her, Lau stretched like he was just getting going. “You going to shoot tomorrow?”
“Didn’t hear about it,” Cameron said.
Ballestrini strode by, singing, “Now that I have you, I see it all so clear. The struggle inside me is nothing to fear. Now that I have you.”
He gestured at Cameron and Lau. “Come on, name the show.”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Lau quipped.
“Now that I have you,” Ballestrini continued, “Our love can’t be denied. Now whatever may happen I’ll be by your side. To love and see you through—”
“Ballerina,” Daley shouted. “Cut it out.”
Ballestrini stopped. “It’s Diego and Carlotta from Z. The Masked Musical.”
Cameron heard the name and faced her locker to avoid them.
“Who’s up for drinks?” Kessler asked, coming into the locker room in his uniform pants and no top.
“Got to get home,” Ambley said. “Wife’s working tonight.”
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 60